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It may be tempting to read into Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge an unspoken or even unconscious attempt to tie the narrative to the actor/director’s personal travails.

That’s not how he sees it.

The film is the true story of Second World War soldier Desmond Doss, a devout Seventh-day Adventist played by Andrew Garfield, who endured abuse and ridicule when he refused to carry a gun as a conscientious objector. Yet Doss heroically braved death as a battlefield medic, saving many lives, later winning the U.S. Medal of Honor.

The bushy-bearded Gibson, 60, is hoping for his own belated redemption, 10 years after the American-born Aussie derailed his career through drunken anti-Semitic and sexist rants to California highway cops. A devout Catholic, awaiting the birth of his ninth child (this one with new girlfriend Rosalind Ross), Gibson feels he’s atoned and his transgressions are “a dim thing in the past,” as he recently told Variety.

But he’s not about to compare his torments to the ones experienced by Doss, who died in 2006 at the age of 87.

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“I’ve never been faced with anything like some of the situations that faced Desmond Doss,” Gibson says from Los Angeles.

“I mean, I’ve never actually had to stick my life, literally, put my life on the line for somebody else, and be willing to sacrifice it for someone else. When one has children, I think that that would be a fairly easy thing to do, because they’re your kids. But what if it was just for some other Joe?

“For Desmond, it didn’t matter to him if (a wounded soldier) was his brother, or if he was American or Japanese or Norwegian or from Timbuktu. Desmond just showed the ultimate act of love for his brothers, by putting his life on the line for the life of another. That’s why I don’t think Hacksaw Ridge is a war story. It’s a love story.”

Gibson is joined on the line by British-American actor Garfield (The Social Network, The Amazing Spider-Man) who at 33 is the subject of Best Actor buzz for his performance, just as Hacksaw Ridge is earning Gibson some of his best reviews since Braveheart won him Best Picture and Best Director kudos at the 1995 Oscars:

I’m amazed that a story this strong about an American war hero took Hollywood decades to make, stretching back to a failed attempt by fellow war hero Audie Murphy and Casablanca producer Hal Wallis.

Gibson: Well, the rights belonged to the man himself (Doss). He wanted to live more or less in obscurity, and not grandstand his exploits or the greatness of what he’d done. He was very humble, and he gave all the credit to God, you know, for any actions that he did.

What made him finally change his mind?

Gibson: Audie Murphy, Hal Wallace, and other people had gone to see him over the years. He finally was prevailed upon, I believe, by the documentarian Terry Benedict (who made a 2004 doc on Doss) to leave his life rights to someone and that there was benefit in telling his story. Because it has the power to inspire others, and I hope that’s what it does. I hope that we can all take a piece of this story and maybe in some time and some place we can apply it to our own lives somehow.

Andrew, how did you find your way into the character of Desmond Doss? You put across his strengths and insecurities very well.

Garfield: He’s an aspirational figure. He was a really beautiful human being to try and discover the essence of. The power of him is that he’s just a man, just a human being like the rest of us, but he manages to somehow get beneath his own animal nature, his own humanness. He kind of owned all of that, but then found underneath it the essence of himself. That’s where he was operating from in his life, that true deep self, which is of course incredibly hard to access, and incredibly hard to know.

We spend our whole lives attempting to get there, attempting to come home to ourselves in some way. Desmond was that miracle human being who was able to get quick access to that as a young man … in the midst of such oppression and abuse — from his own army and from his own family — he managed to stay true to his own beliefs, to his own core values. I don’t mean the dogma of his church so much — I mean the values that are kind of intrinsically etched on his soul. And to withstand the tsunami of other peoples’ disapproval in that way and being totally misunderstood and misperceived is a revolutionary act.”

Hacksaw Ridge is unsparing in its depiction of the visceral horror of war, just as one of your earlier career successes Gallipoli was. Why is it important to show that on the screen?

Gibson: I think it’s necessary to show it and to pay tribute to the veterans. You know, to show the kinds of things that those men were subjected to and how difficult that would have been and could we do that? I think it’s necessary to put the audience in the foxhole a little bit, to experience that war. And also to take Desmond and to introduce him into that element. It tells you what it must have taken to not bear arms. To not kill another. But to go in there, fearlessly, and continually sacrifice himself for his fellow soldiers and to crawl into dangerous situations.

In many ways, Hacksaw Ridge is a story about healing, which is not what you expect from a film like this.

Gibson: This was Desmond’s war. His war was very personal to him, but if more people were like that, I don’t think there would be war! That’s not going to happen, but it certainly is worth thinking about and it’s a way of looking at war.

How do you think a movie like this will be received in these volatile times we live in, where wars are happening everywhere?

Gibson: I think it will be received very well. I think it’s a refreshing and inspiring, uplifting message. And even for the veterans, those guys who have seen action, I think would respond to this in a way that we who have not can’t respond. We had veterans in the film, including (ex-Aussie Commando) Damien Thomlinson, whose legs were blown off Afghanistan. He kind of re-enacted his own thing in this film, and for him, it was an entirely different experience to what it would be for myself or Andrew, since we haven’t seen that kind of action. And he approached it with trepidation, but we were able to access some of that through him, and it was profound.

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